When parents pass away, their children are the first to be saddened by the loss. They grieve and sense that their death leaves a significant void in their lives. The children in this narrative, on the other hand, were not overly devastated about their mother’s passing. Their mother’s funeral obituary is nothing like you would expect from her own flesh and blood.
The obituary was brief and unpleasant. In five savage paragraphs, it was a total of 105 words long.
The tale begins in the winter of 1938, when Kathleen Dehmlow (nee Schunk) is born. Her marriage to Dennis Dehmlow occurred 19 years later in the Minnesota city of Wabasso. This family includes Gina and Jay, the couple’s two children.
The following is a portion of an obituary:
“In 1962 she became pregnant by her husband’s brother Lyle Dehmlow and moved to California.”
When the next line of text appeared, everyone gasped:
“She abandoned her children, Gina and Jay who were then raised by her parents in Clements, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Schunk.”
It is also evident by the fifth paragraph that her children have a negative opinion of their mother:
“She passed away on May 31, 2018, in Springfield and will now face judgment. She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.”
The five-paragraph obituary allows readers to learn a little about Kathleen Dehmlow’s life. And it’s not a pleasant sight. It’s unclear what prompted them to compose such terrible things about their mother in her obituary and publish it in the Redwood Falls Gazette.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such stories in the news.
In addition, Mariann Therese Johnson-Reddick’s daughter made a death notice about her mother’s mistakes.
It reads:
“Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick born Jan 4, 1935, and died alone on Sept. 30, 2013. She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible… Everyone she met, adult or child was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.”
The essay for Katherine Reddick written by XO Jane is just as sad. Her daughter stated that the late Katherine abused her children during hours-long rages, regularly hurled whatever was at hand at them, and encouraged them to steal from neighbors, hit one another, and sleep silently on the kitchen floor while she worked as an escort.
She added that her mother would go out on the town, drugging the younger children to prevent disturbances and forcing the older ones to eat dog food on weekends.
In addition to such awful statements from relatives, there are also obituary confessions.
In 2012, a scientist from Salt Lake City, Utah named Val Patterson stated in his death notice that he didn’t even have a doctorate in engineering. In reality, he had never completed college!
He wrote: “What happened was that the day I went to pay off my college student loan at the U of U, the girl working there put my receipt into the wrong stack, and two weeks later, a Ph.D. diploma came in the mail. I didn’t even graduate, I only had about 3 years of college credit. In fact, I never did even learn what the letters ‘ Ph.D.’ even stood for.”
Susan Soper, a specialist on obituaries and the author of a workbook that aids individuals in writing their own, says “People don’t generally speak ill of the dead. In fact, sometimes they will… put the best possible face on a person in the obituary and overlook whatever the misdeeds or characteristics that might be unpleasant.”
However, Soper stated that this is not always the case. But it’s sometimes surprising to learn that there are many obituaries expressing genuine regret for someone else’s hurt or wrongdoings.
